"Please, Palgrave!" Adrienne supplicated in a low voice. She did not eat. She had drunk her tea and sat looking down at her plate. "Don't think of it any more. Meg is very, very unhappy. We can hardly imagine what the misery and confusion of Meg's heart must be."
"Oh, you'll make excuses for anyone, Adrienne! You're not a shining example of happiness either, if it comes to that. It's atrocious of Meg to treat you as she does. Atrocious of her to hold you responsible."
"But I am responsible," said Adrienne, while the dull flush still dyed her face. "I've always said that I was responsible. It was I who persuaded them to go."
"Yes. To go. Instead of staying and being lovers secretly. I know all about it. And no doubt Meg would rather it had been so now. And so would Mother!" Palgrave ground his teeth on a laugh. "That's where morality lands them! Pretty, isn't it!"
A silence fell and then Adrienne rose and said that Mr. Jackson would be waiting for her. "He's coming at half-past five," she said, and, with his gloomy tenderness, Palgrave informed Oldmeadow that she was reading logic and Plato; "to keep up with me, you know."
Adrienne, smiling faintly, laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder as she went past his chair. "Come in to-night, after dinner, and tell me what you decide," she said.
"I'll have no news for you," Palgrave replied.
Oldmeadow had gone to hold the door open for her and, as she paused there to give him her hand, he heard her murmur: "Will you come down with me?"
"Let me see you to the bottom of the stair," he seized the intimation, and, as she went before him, she said, still in the low, purposeful voice, and he felt sure now that this had been her intention in coming to tea: "It's only so that you shan't think I'll oppose you. If you can persuade him, I shall not oppose it. I think he's right. But it's too hard. I mean, I hope you can persuade him that it's right to go."
She had stepped out on to the threshold at the foot of the stairs and he paused behind her, astonished. "You want me to persuade him of what you think wrong?"
She stood still looking out at the sunny quadrangle. "People must think for themselves. I don't know who is right or who is wrong. Perhaps I've influenced Palgrave. Perhaps he wouldn't have felt like this if it hadn't been for me. I don't know. But if you can make him feel it right to go, I shall be glad." She stepped out into the quadrangle.